Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Incredigirl and Squeakyboy
March 18, 2005

We bought The Incredibles on DVD while we were out last night. It’s a good flick if you haven’t seen it. Typical Pixar, which is to say, “good stuff”. The Jack-Jack Attack short on the extras disk is pretty good. It’s about what happens to the babysitter when the rest of the family leaves Jack-Jack at home to chastise/rescue Mr. Incredible.

Berta told Abby that this DVD is a “real” copy of the movie, not the BitTorrent mpeg version that I’ve been playing on the mod-chipped XBox all this time. I followed up her comment by saying, “Yeah, and this one probably doesn’t say ‘Property of Disney and Pixar - No Not Duplicate’.” But Berta was quick to reply, “This one probably does say, ‘Do not duplicate’.” Come to think of it, it probably says “Property of Disney and Pixar” too, so what exactly did I buy here?

Portscans Aplenty
March 18, 2005

I played the first half of that “The Office” video over at myspace.com, which totally wasn’t worth my time. I thought that I might like it from the buzz I’ve heard, but I’m definitely taking that out of my PVR timer.

More importantly, ever since I played the video my software firewall (inside the NAT-enabled Cisco router, mind you) has been throwing up alarms. Myspace has been portscanning me!

Artychoke Theme Preview
March 17, 2005

Here’s another one of those “too cool for words” things that I get so excited about that I tell everyone before it’s done. Tired of those yet? Good…

Here’s a screencam of what my prototype WordPress theme (Artychoke) can do. I think it pretty much speaks for itself:

Do I need a Mac?
March 17, 2005

Berta says “no”, I’m sure, but it sounds like a spark of an idea. How else am I to test some of this web stuff? Browsercam seems like a good idea, but it costs money. Presumably it would cost less than a whole Mac, but would it be fast and available enough?

And where does one get a junker Mac for cheap? It wouldn’t be my main PC, so it’s just going to sit dormant on the shelf until I need it. It should probably share a KVM switch with my PC.

A Groupware Hole
March 16, 2005

I’ve been looking for groupware for myself and my projects, and I think I’ve found an enormous hole in these offerings. Here is what I need, why, and how much I am willing to pay for it:

Imagine thousands of out of work software developers. All of these developers turn to the web to make money while they look for jobs. Some have even evolved this into new full-time careers. Some have banded together to support each other and formed small, custom web-development companies. Keeping track of small projects is no problem for these islands of web development, but should they want to take on more work or provide more value to their client, they’re going to need groupware to manage it well. What groupware should they choose? Well, there isn’t anything out there for them.